


That Goddamn Horse

by MonoclePony



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Epilogue Timeline, Flashbacks, Game Spoilers, Gen, Grief/Mourning, John learning a thing, OC horse, Psychological, character piece, hints of fantasy/supernatural, pain with a hopeful end, the horse is important, thought piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:08:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22639795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonoclePony/pseuds/MonoclePony
Summary: That’s when he hears it. A piercing squeal like a whistle that cuts through the noise of the crowd and the animals like a knife. It comes from the horse pens, where a crush of animals are churning up the mud in a panic. John knows the sound from long ago, and he doesn’t want to believe it.John Marston is doing just fine. That's what he tells himself, anyway. He has his family and his ranch the way he always wanted, and he does just peachy - so long as he doesn't think about the man who made it happen. Things change when, at a livestock auction in Valentine, John stumbles across one of Arthur's old horses and knows he can't go home without her. With the ugly and vicious mare in tow, he begins to think back to the life he once had - and remember the man he needs to grieve.John has a lot to learn about life, and maybe that goddamn horse is the one to teach him. Or, maybe it's the wonder that is Abigail Roberts.
Relationships: Abigail Roberts Marston/John Marston
Comments: 14
Kudos: 63





	1. Memory

**Author's Note:**

> So this was a Christmas gift for a friend of mine, and once she read it and gave me permission I decided to upload it here. I'm branching out from my usual fandom niche, but I can only hope that people enjoy it. Red Dead Redemption I and II are easily my favourite games ever, and I fell head over heels with everything about them, so I hope this does them a lil bit of justice.
> 
> Also yes, Madam is definitely the horse I had on my first play-through with Arthur. We had a bond, okay?
> 
> As always, comments are always appreciated and you can also find me on @purple_tealeaf if you want to connect there!

John can count on a single hand the number of times he’s cried. He cried when his momma died, all those years ago when he didn’t know any better. He shed a few tears when Jack was born, slinking away out of sight before he was missed too long. He knew the gang talked of it that time, saw the way they eyed him when he came back and the look of fierce betrayal on Abigail’s face, the Abigail that was everyone’s and yet his alone.

The way sick bison cut themselves off from the herd to die, that’s how John Marston cries. It’s an instinct, he reasons, pure and simple; an instinct that stops the others in the pack weakening too.

He doesn’t cry about Arthur Morgan, that night on the ridge. He doesn’t do it when he looks him in the face for what he knows is the last time, and sees fear hidden beneath the layer of brute stubbornness. He wants to – dear _God,_ he wants to – but he can’t, not with Abigail and Jack needing him the way they do. He cannot be weak, he’s been too weak already, and instead he offers nothing but a ‘thank you’ and a nod.

He runs through the night without looking back, even when he hears the stutter of gunshots slow and eventually halt completely. He doesn’t stop. He keeps running, even though his legs are screaming and his mind is racing. He knows there’s no point. He knows what that means.

But it’s alright because Arthur wanted that. He wanted John to be the one that got out, was fixated on it even – but why?

John often thinks it nothing more than the desperation of a dying man who clings to the one thing he feels he can control. He sometimes thinks there may be more to it than that.

He gets angry, early on. He wonders if it was some big trick of Arthur’s, that it wasn’t kindness at all but his final spiteful jibe having _him_ be the one left behind to remember. Arthur didn’t even like him that much anyway, not after the disappearing act he pulled, but for some reason he is the one who’s chosen?

He’s the one left to rage, and make mistakes, and run.

Rage. Make mistakes. Run.

Rage. Make mistakes. Run.

Over and over, like it’s a cycle he just can’t break out of.

The first months are tough, and he sees the toll it takes on Abigail and the boy. He tries his best, but it’s difficult to shake a habit that’s been his life since he was twelve years old. It runs through his blood like a poison, and every time he robs or starts a fight or shoots a gun, he feels alive again – just for that wonderful, electrifying moment. It’s a flicker, a flash of a life he once had… and then he returns to being John again. Just John. John the husband, John the rancher, John the honest man. And he hates that flicker, he swears he does. He hates not feeling alive until he does something that upsets his common-law wife. He hates feeling like a part of him died up on that ridge with Arthur.

But it gets better. Life moves on, as it’s apt to do. John decides to stop thinking of Arthur, to stop trying to rustle up the courage to talk about him, and pushes that feeling down into his heels. Once he’s settled in Beecher’s Hope he takes it one step further; in the middle of the night with Abigail and Jack sleeping, he takes the trunk holding his old clothes, the books Dutch gave him as a boy and Arthur’s belongings from its place in his bedroom and drags it out into the yard. It’s there that he buries it, in a hole deep enough for a man. It’s a grave, he realises as he surveys his handiwork. A grave for his old life, the one he needs to keep away in case he breaks.

And for a little while, it works. He becomes a rancher, and not a bad one either. He laughs again, smiles more. He raises cattle, makes a pretty penny when they go to market. He makes friends with his neighbours, spins them a line about moving from the West for a better chance here on the plains. They believe him.

He builds the lie up around himself like the walls of his barn, and he’s happy – but only on the surface. Abigail knows that the light doesn’t reach his eyes, that his laughter isn’t the same carefree bark she’s used to. He knows she knows. They don’t talk about it. It’s better that way, he reckons.

After a year or so, the pain settles to a dull, slow ache. It hurts him, but only slowly.

* * *

Things change the day he arrives at the Valentine livestock auction. He makes the journey North with Uncle, who complains about his imaginary lumbago for the majority of the ride. To save money John elects to camp along the way, stretched out underneath the stars the way he used to. It stirs a memory to the surface, and as it peeks through the wall he’s kept up John’s transported back to the times when he went on excursions with Arthur.

Since they were Dutch’s favourites, his boys, Arthur was often given the job of looking out for him. Despite Arthur’s protests to the contrary, he wasn’t bad with kids. On the first night they spent out of the camp together John noticed a softness appear around the other man’s eyes he hadn’t seen before. They had talked about the stars for hours, Arthur teaching him about the patterns they made, and John had gone to sleep dreaming of bears and hunters in the ink black sky.

After the first night, John sets up a tent so he doesn’t have to see those taunting stars.

They make good time; they arrive when the market is in full swing and milling with ranchers from miles around. In another life, John would be scouting out the weak spots, waiting for the money to go to the bank and scoping out when there was the smallest amount of security – but not this lifetime.

He dismounts and tethers his horse at the nearest post. Her name is Rachel, a fine boned thoroughbred mare with a heart as big as the country and speed to cross it. She turns her head to watch him, her ears pricked. He runs a hand down her face, soothing, and turns to his companion. “You get yourself over there and start looking at the sheep,” he instructs Uncle.

“What am I meant to be lookin’ for?” Uncle retorts.

John considers this. “I ain’t sure, just… make sure they don’t got no fleas or anything.”

“Fleas, he says… don’t know sheep if he got bit by one…” Uncle grumbles, but to John’s surprise actually does what he’s told.

John watches him go, swallowed up by the crowd, and that’s when he hears it. A piercing squeal like a whistle that cuts through the noise of the crowd and the animals like a knife. It comes from the horse pens, where a crush of animals were churning up the mud in a panic. John knows the sound from long ago, and he doesn’t want to believe it.

Before he knows it he’s already headed to the pens, pushing townsfolk aside to get closer; he gets a few feet from the pen when it happens.

One of the horses rises up out of the throng with another of those squeals, its legs wheeling angrily in its rear and its ears pinned flat back against its head. It’s a black, dark as a shadow save for the flashes of white on its face and feet. The others around it shy, some of them driving themselves into the fences to get clear, and the moment the horse drops to the floor it rises again, vicious and angry. John stops dead because he knows those rolling eyes, set wicked in the flat head.

“Madam?” he questions, more to the Almighty than anyone on earth. Because why now would this apparition, this _phantom_ come to haunt him?

The single word conjures up a memory, faded and fuzzed around the edges, of Horseshoe Overlook. He couldn’t sleep, too jarred with the sting of his wounds, and the sound of hooves made him stand from his spot at the fire…

He cuts the memory short abruptly, throwing up another wall to block it out. He can’t remember. Not now, when he’s so close to being an honest man. But that mare…

She’s watching him now, stood perfectly still in the mass of horseflesh and the clamour of shouting auctioneers. Her head is up, her nostrils flaring pinkly. She drives a hoof into the earth, and whinnies. And John knows in that instant there is no way in hell he’s going back to Beecher’s Hope without that goddamned animal.

The bidding war is not a fierce one. When the black mare is released into the corral alone she stands in the centre, arrogant as a stallion and quivering with nervous energy. The auctioneer speaks: “part of a job lot from the Van Horn Stables, part of a deceased’s estate”.

At once she explodes, launching herself off the ground in a series of bucks and kicks that threaten to shatter bone and fencepost alike. The men sitting on the fence dive out of the way, some fall into the corral itself and scramble for safety. John just watches. There’s no doubt in his mind now that this is Madam. She’s wild. She’s untrainable. She is unmistakeably _Arthur’s._

He is pitted against a meat man, and John wins her with the money he was meant to spend on sheep. The hammer goes down and she is dragged, kicking and screaming, from the corral by a team of strong looking locals.

John signs the paperwork quick, in case Uncle appears and ruins it all. He asks, “What you mean, deceased’s estate?” to the man handling the forms. He reminds John of Strauss, though a decade younger.

“Ain’t no one nobody knows,” he answers, looking over the papers John has signed in his unintelligible scrawl. “Some drifter, I expect. Came into hard times, left his horses to rot in livery and never paid the owner no rent.” He casts a look over at the mare, who is driving her hoof into the muddy ground and creating huge gouges in the earth. “It’s common enough with prospectors or bounty hunters. Either the fella went back home to the big city when he didn’t get no gold, or the damned fool gone an’ got hisself killed chasin’ down somethin’ too big for him.”

John doesn’t react to this, but it hurts something inside him hidden. He goes to Madam once the paperwork is done, reaches out a hand and tries to lay a hand on her – but she jolts away, her ears back and eyes rolling. This is the moment Uncle reappears, with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a fistful of bills in the other. “Found yerself a new wife, have you?” he burps.

John reddens. “Shut up you old good-for-nothin’. It don’t concern you.”

“It sure as hell does concern me!” Uncle replies hotly. “It’s my home too, y’know. Need to make sure you ain’t throwing our money away.”

“Our?” John repeats, and Uncle quails at the tone of his voice.

“Well…y-know. The ranch. We was here to buy sheep, finest sheep in the country you said.” He squints at Madam. “What you doin’ buyin’ some clapped out old nag for?”

He stumbles closer and John wants to shout out a warning, but to his surprise Madam stills. She turns to regard Uncle with an eye that isn’t crazy or rolling, and she almost seems like a normal horse. John knows that Uncle hasn’t realised what she is, and he doesn’t feel like sharing that information. He’s certain Uncle would mock him, and he isn’t in the mood to be mocked.

“She got something about her,” he settles for. It’s not a lie.

Uncle snorts. “She’s a Saddler! You could get horses like her a dime a dozen – and plenty nicer ones besides. Look at the state o’ her!” He gestures to the one thing John has noticed; wounds, some deep, healed over but never gone. Some were from her time with Arthur, but others were definitely new. “What possessed you?”

“I told you,” John replies gruffly, snatching the handful of money from Uncle’s pudgy fingers, “she got something.”

Uncle grumbles but seems to know better than to prod him. John uses what little money Uncle has left to buy an old ram and two ewes whose eyes point in different directions, but it’s something to quell the forthcoming rage in Abigail. He mounts up an hour later with Madam’s rope tied to his saddle horn, and Uncle in charge of the sheep. Madam fights most of the journey, tossing her head around and creating a ruckus loud enough to startle even the unshakeable Rachel.

Uncle complains the whole way back about the mare; he chooses a new feature each time, her yellowing teeth one day and her knobbly knees the next. But John can’t stop himself from staring at her during the evenings, when they’re camped out and she’s hobbled next to Rachel.

He’s not sure what he’s expecting to see, and with the fire reflecting in her eyes she seems like an animal out of a picture book. She must be old now, at least in her twenties, John muses as she stamps and snorts, but there isn’t a single silver hair on her coat. She’s unchanged, like the weather – like how the night, balmy and humid as it is, feels like the one back years ago.

John is tired and has a warm meal in his belly from the Valentine saloon. It is this reason, and only this, that he lets the wall crumble. He lets himself fall back eight years.

* * *

_May, 1899._

The evening was fresh and young, warm with the memory of the sun that had beat down on it all day. Horseshoe Overlook was a good spot, a perfect spot, one picked by Hosea and made a home by the rest. It was calm there, and quiet - exactly what they needed after their flight over the mountains. Dutch weren’t so bad back then, and everyone still had hope.

Arthur was late back to camp that night. It was only John that noticed, since he stayed up later than usual. The night was becoming sticky with heat and plagued the still-fresh wounds on his face. They was keeping busy healing, and he didn’t have no need to be sleeping when Abigail and the boy did. He was the one, self-elected guardsman, that saw the gang’s most trusted member trot into camp with another horse tied behind his own. As always, Arthur saw him before he saw Arthur.

“You’re up late,” he observed gruffly. “Guilty conscience, Marston?”

“You’re real funny, Morgan. Couldn’t sleep.” John pushed off the tree he’d been leant against, curiosity overcoming the jibes he wanted to throw. “Who you got there?” he asked, peering behind the rump of Arthur’s saddle horse.

It was a young, scrappy thing, a mare the colour of pitch with rolling, wild eyes. She was throwing all her weight into the rope halter fashioned about her face, though the placid strength of Arthur’s Tennessee Walker meant she weren’t going nowhere fast.

“A project,” Arthur answered, “since we was to lie low here on Dutch’s orders.”

“Since when do you listen to Dutch?” Arthur gave him a severe look but said nothing. John looked back to the horse. “You stole her?” he asked.

“Caught,” Arthur corrected, dismounting from his horse and too busy fussing over him to pay either John or the mare much attention. “Near Caliban’s Seat. Cut her from the herd, tracked her for hours. Gave me the run around, she did. Threw me twice.”

John took another look at the mare. “Why bother? She ain’t nothing special.”

The mare drove a hoof into the ground, her whole frame rippling with anger. Her legs was too long for her body and her head was flat as a blacksmith’s iron. John weren’t no expert, but he’d seen enough good horseflesh to know she weren’t the best put together animal. It was common in wild stock; they never did get broke properly and bred like crazy.

Arthur loosed his saddle horse’s cinch and shot John a look he knew to mean he better quit. “She won’t win no county fair that’s for sure, but that ain’t why I got her.”

“Then wh-”

“She got spirit. And speed, plenty of that too. She got a good heart, good blood. She’ll do okay.”

“You’re starting to sound like Dutch.”

Arthur snorted. “Sure, but at least I ain’t picking up no waifs or strays off the street. One mongrel horse is plenty for me – she ain’t gonna be no trouble.” He knocked John’s hat off his hat in one practiced movement and smirked. “No more than a Mongrel Marston, eh?”

“Sure, Morgan.” John bent to retrieve his hat and saw the white feet of the mare surge forward. He leapt back in time to miss the horse’s snapping teeth. “Christ!” He fell, sprawling, in the dirt. “She’s a goddamn demon!”

“She’ll learn,” Arthur said. The way he said it sounded like a promise.

“What you callin’ that thing?” John asked.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Arthur replied with a grin, “Madam. Since she got such a bad temper. Besides, she got a mean look in her eye like a Madam I knew in a Utah whorehouse.”

John never did find out which particular Madam she was named after. Madam she became, and Madam she remained.

* * *

Abigail isn’t happy when he arrives back at Beecher’s Hope. He knows almost immediately by the fine line her mouth draws as she steps out of the house and sees them leading in three sheep and a horse that looks like it’s seen better days. She marches up to him with purpose, a fire flashing in her eyes that makes him waver but also makes him love her more.

“What in the hell are you doin’, John? I thought you was bringing back sheep! We got plenty horses.”

Madam bristles at the noise. John looks from the mare to Abigail and back again. “I guess you’d say it was a favour.”

“Don’t go speaking in riddles, John Marston!” Abigail chides, and he narrowly avoids a smack as he dismounts from Rachel. “We can’t make wool from no horse, smart ass.”

“We got _some_ sheep,” Uncle concedes, though he makes a big show of getting them into the paddock John slaved over a week before. “Don’t you worry Abbie, it’ll be fine ‘til John decides he wants to leave you for that mare o’ his.”

John shoots him a glare that sends him scuttling away, no doubt to find a tree to fall asleep under. Lazy old goat. Abigail stays, her anger waning but still crackling some. “Did you at _least_ look it over? Check it’s healthy?” she asks, stepping nearer to Madam to size her up. The mare, to John’s amusement, seems to be doing the same. “She’s pretty beat up.”

The scars are more obvious in the sun. They cross Madam’s body in deliberate, nasty places and John wonders what on earth happened to her. There are parts of her coat that are paler and raised, and he realises after a moment that they’re burn marks. He brings the leadrope close to her chin to stop him or Abigail getting themselves bitten. “She’s been in the wars, alright.”

Abigail shakes her head, and suddenly her focus isn’t on Madam. It’s on _him._ “What’s going on, John?” she asks, and there’s no anger now – just concern.

John isn’t sure he can answer that, and so he doesn’t. He just shrugs and leads Madam away with a sinking feeling. Abigail’s eyes burn into his back, but he doesn’t look back. He starts to construct the lie in his head as he goes, knowing full well that the truth isn’t going to slide with the likes of Abigail. After all, how insane does he want to sound?

He lets her loose in the paddock and watches, propping himself on the fence as she shakes herself and moves off, head snaking low to the ground to pick at mouthfuls of hay the others have dropped. John’s mare keeps an eye on her new paddock mate and is quick to shepherd the other horses away as she draws near. Madam doesn’t seem to care; she is far too interested in the mountain of hay put out for them, and soon stands in the corner, chewing contentedly. Her ears remain back and her eyes are large with suspicion, but there’s a softening. Just slightly.

John goes back into the house for a dinner he pretends to enjoy for Abigail’s sake, and to his relief the subject of Madam isn’t brought up. Abigail sits down herself after serving them all and says, “The boy was wondering if you’d take him hunting tomorrow.”

Jack looks up from his book like he’s heard a gunshot. “Ma! I only said if Pa wasn’t busy! I was gonna ask myself!”

John eyes Uncle, who is in the middle of shovelling unfinished mashed potato into his mouth. “You reckon there’s deer up in them woods?”

“Sure.” Uncle swallows his mouthful. “If you don’t wander into no Murfree boys first. Then you’s the deer.”

“Uncle, don’t scare the boy,” Abigail chides as Jack visibly pales. “There ain’t no Murfrees up there no more, Jack. Don’t you listen to Uncle. He don’t know nothing.”

Jack doesn’t seem convinced, but John presses it. “We can go hunting, boy. You kept your gun clean?” Jack looks sheepish. “That’s okay, you got time. Just make sure it’s clean and ready for tomorrow.” He takes a look out the window and sees the sun, fat and red, sink down over the horizon. “We’ll leave early I reckon, see if we can get something good for the pot.”

Jack shrugs and returns to his book, but there’s the hint of a smile on his face. There’s a special sort of ache John feels when he looks at his son, so mild-mannered and unlike himself, and wonders if it’s his fault that Jack don’t feel like he can show how he really feels. He doesn’t have to wonder long – he knows it’s because of him. He can tell, with Abigail’s not-quite frown and Jack’s not-quite smile, that he’s not the only silent one in their household.

He tries to sleep that night, but finds he can’t. It comes with being too used to sleeping outdoors, under a canvas or nothing at all. Sleeping with a roof over your head makes it feel as though a great sack has been placed over the world. Though the house keeps out the noise of the howling wind and the tickle of raindrops on his skin, it can’t keep out everything. He can hear the cattle stirring, the horses whinnying, and it’s those sounds that slip him into another dream of the past.

* * *

_June, 1899_

They had been in Valentine a good few weeks, and despite every effort to the contrary, life was going well. There hadn’t been no trouble they couldn’t run from, and since they was hidden out of sight it had given John the best opportunity to get strong. He hadn’t been sure if he’d make it if they was to stay up in the Grizzlies, but thanks to Pearson’s questionable stew and plenty of rest under a friendly sun, he was feeling far better. The combined powers of Abigail and Dutch, however, forbade him from straying too far from the camp. He knew that Abigail was worried for his health, but Dutch? Part of him thought that Dutch was keeping an eye on him for other reasons.

Arthur was busy as usual; he was given a thin sheaf of paper from Strauss with the names of debtors scrawled hastily across it, then Javier would ask for his assistance in a robbery, then there was the matter of a tip off from a fella he’d met out riding. The others worked, sure, but Arthur worked hardest. He came back in the early hours, saddle-sore and ready to drop but content. Many a time John would be sat at the campfire feeling sorry for himself and Arthur would emerge out of the dark like a phantom, the fire’s light throwing the shadows of his face up in a strange relief.

John didn’t know how he did it. The man barely slept, ate little and rode hard. Why he hadn’t split off from the group and formed his own gang John didn’t know. But then again, he seemed to take pleasure in his tasks. Nothing was ever a bother – with the exception of Strauss’ morally ambiguous debt collecting – and though he could be gone for days at a time he always came back.

One of the quieter days when he was filling up the water buckets around camp, the sound of Arthur’s voice made him jump.

“Marston!”

He nearly dropped the bucket he was holding. He turned to see Arthur stood between his saddle horse and that goddamned wild mare of his, one hand on her neck. “You busy?”

“Why?”

“I need someone to ride with me. Will you come?”

John emptied his bucket into the right place and dropped it to the floor. “Where we riding?”

“Nowhere in particular,” Arthur shrugged. “Just a ride. Figured I’d teach you a thing or two about horses.”

“You saying I don’t know horses?”

“I’m saying you could know ‘em better.”

“Huh.” Suspicion rose in him like a snake. Arthur never asked him to go with him for anything. He usually asked Charles, or Lenny. He seemed particularly fond of those two – it felt more as though he put up with John. But he walked over all the same. “Sure. What sorta wisdom you gonna give, Morgan?”

“See, John: you need to be smart to use sarcasm, and you ain’t smart. That was just… painful.” Arthur dodged the swipe sent his way and nodded to the mare. “You’re gonna help me run her. See what she can do.”

John shook his head. “You’re crazy. She’ll kill you.”

Arthur grinned at him. “You’ll see. Help me hold her.”

John helped. On the third attempt Madam let Arthur sling his saddle onto her back, though she twitched and kicked out a few times. The bridle took longer, but Arthur showed John how to massage her gums in such a way to trick her mouth into opening. Once the bit was in she started to throw her head around and snort, but she didn’t have chance to get used to it. Without a moment’s hesitation Arthur sprang into the saddle, settling himself deep before the mare could think about it, and clicked his tongue. “Let’s get.”

They rode out carefully, John taking the lead and Arthur controlling Madam with a few commanding words and a strong hand. They waited until they got out to the open range, with its rolling hills in the shadows of the mesas, and Arthur brought her up alongside him. She was blowing excitedly, her ears pricked forward at the sight of open ground. “Well, here we are,” Arthur said, giving her a swift pat. “You ready?”

John didn’t answer right away. Arthur waited, his eyes penetrating even under the shadow of his hat. For some reason, the thought crossed John’s mind that this moment, this day, this _hour_ was going to be one he remembered above all others. All the fights, the money, the heists, none of that would matter – but this would. It was a disarming, unsettling feeling, one he didn’t much like, and he shook it loose with a pat to his horse’s sturdy neck. Old Boy shifted under him, understanding that they were there to run, and John nodded to Arthur. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

That was all the signal the other man needed. With a barking shout, he drove his heels into Madam’s sides and let her have her head. She leapt forwards like a hunting cat, pulling the reins out of Arthur’s hands, and John let Old Boy do the same. Old Boy was fast; he would thunder across ground like an oncoming storm, though he was steady and sure. John could control his storm, bring him back under control with the slightest of hands and was still ready to release at any moment.

Madam was another thing entirely.

She ran like a hurricane, her mane whipping back in Arthur’s face as she kept her head high and proud. She didn’t fly – no, there was nothing elegant or graceful about the way she ran. She attacked the earth beneath her, each stride another strike against the world brave enough to keep her rooted to it.

Her rider was almost unrecognisable. With the snatches of Arthur John managed to see during their furious gallop, he saw that he was grinning wildly. The hard lines of his face, the ones carved through years and decades of living hard and dodging bullets, just vanished under the bronc’s rolling hooves. He looked like the twenty year old Arthur again, the man with dreams of the life he lived always belonging to him and no one else. He looked – well, he looked _free._ At one point John turned to yell a curse in his general direction (had Madam bumped Old Boy? Had one of them stumbled? Who knew) and saw him _laughing._ Actually laughing, breathlessly happy.

They ran until Madam slowed, which happened to take them five miles out of civilisation and into the blank canvas of country. When Arthur began to gather up the reins and bring her back under control she obeyed, champing at the bit and making ugly expressions at the disinterested Old Boy. Her ears were still forward, and she quivered under the strain of the gallop. When John nudged Old Boy up alongside them Arthur slipped off her back and rested his head against the arch of her neck, catching his breath. He took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his face, but he was still smiling. “I reckon… she’s plenty fast,” he said.

“Goddamn,” John replied.

Arthur chuckled and patted her ink-black shoulder. “You know, I ain’t gonna be selling her on. I got a feeling she’s built for this life. Bit like us.”

John, still catching his own breath, dismounted. Old Boy was blowing hard, but he would be okay. “C’mon,” Arthur said, taking Madam’s reins. “Let’s head up that hill, gotta show you something. We’ll take it slow.”

He pointed to a spot tucked under one of the bigger mesas, off the beaten path and up a steep, rocky slope. John gave him a look, but Arthur ignored it and clicked his tongue. Madam stirred, and they began to head towards it. John sighed and followed.

Arthur picked his way up the ridge carefully and Madam followed obediently behind, picking up her feet as though she was wading through water. They weaved higher, but John found the trail wasn’t ever steep enough for the horses to lose their footing. Arthur was always careful of that.

As they crested the top John spared a look for the mesa they were stood beside. It was an impossible hunk of rock, bursting from the ground like an order from God that no man or beast would ever step a foot on.

“Look over here, John.”

John turned. He looked. He saw the world, _his_ world, stretched out before him like the pelt of a great animal. It seemed empty at first, but then he saw the life in it. The stalking coyotes, the clusters of rabbits and the distant cloud of dust from a wagon. The horses blew tiredly as the wind picked up around them, and there was the feeling again. The awareness that, in this quiet time, John was going to remember it vividly. It would visit his dreams, it would plague him in his hours of need. It reminded him that this weren’t a usual time. Feeling this calm, this content, it weren’t normal. The thought of the future, unknown and terrible, waiting for him around the corner made him nervous. Afraid, even.

But then Arthur spoke, and he forgot all that. “Quite a country,” he remarked. He seemed thoughtful, and John wondered if he, too, was feeling peculiar.

“Quite a country,” he agreed.

“Big enough to get lost in.”

“Sure.” John looked at Arthur then; he was staring so hard at the land laid out before them it was like he wanted to punch a hole in it and fall right in. “Why’d you want me here, Arthur?”

The older man gave a half-smile that was almost sad. “To get a little perspective into that half-eaten brain o’ yours.”

“What you meanin’?”

Arthur sighed, his eyes drifting back to the view. “I ain’t good with words, John, that’s Dutch’s job, but… the world’s changing out there. There ain’t much country like this no more. This life we got – the runnin’, the killin’, it… it’s gonna catch up with us sometime. We’re dyin’ out, folk like us.” He patted Madam’s neck as she shifted nervously. “I been thinking about it a lot, and it’s too late for me. I got it in my blood, too deep to be taken out, but… I dunno.” He shrugged, avoiding his eye. “I guess what I’m trying to say is… you gotta be ready. To go.”

John clenched his fist around the reins he held tight onto. “You’re meant to be the strong one, Arthur. You ain’t meant to say this sorta crap.” Arthur remained silent, staring out at the land that shrank under the weight of a sinking sun. “We’ll be okay,” John pressed, hoping that if he said it with enough feeling it would be true. “We always are. You trust Dutch, right?”

It looked as though Arthur had to fight himself to answer. “Of course I do, I ain’t dumb. Just…” He frowned. “Maybe it’s nothing. I ain’t got the brain to think like this, I figure.” Still, the other man was quiet when they took it slow back to camp. Troubled, even.

John thought back to the transformation he’d seen as they rode, and mused on the idea that maybe both of them were still those same desperate kids – just dressed in different clothes.


	2. Rebirth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A loss, and a return.

The morning breaks too quick and too bright. John still manages to feed the sheep and cows in the time it takes Jack to stumble, bleary-eyed and sleep-drunk from the house. “Ain’t gonna be catching no kinda animal if you got sleep in your eye, boy,” John says. Jack doesn’t answer, but it’s a sullen sort of silence that falls between them in the barn. Jack saddles his horse, a small Tennessee Walker the colour of burnt caramel he calls Crusoe. John steels himself, passes Rachel’s stall and heads out into the paddock. He heads for Madam.

She watches him come, pawing the ground as he gets close. Does she remember him the way he remembers her? It’s hard to tell. She never liked no one but Arthur. John doesn’t know too much about horse’s memories, but he does know that they can be ruined. They can live haunted with the ghosts of pain. Perhaps he was more like horses than he knew.

To his surprise, Madam lets him catch her; she complains some when he fixes Rachel’s bridle on her and swings the saddle over her back, but she stands better than he expected. Jack’s eyes are on him when he leads her onto the dirt path near the house. He wants to ask, John knows he does, but he don’t give him the option. He focuses instead on keeping the mare steady, as she’s shifting a little and throwing her head about. She stamps and blows, unsettling Jack’s little Walker.

“ _Horses ain’t delicate_ ,” comes a voice, as deep and earthy as though its owner is stood just beside him. “ _They got plenty of guts and they know you’re scared_.”

John wheezes out a breath, closing his eyes in an attempt to ward off the sound invading his head. He rests his head against the cracked saddle leather, breathing in the familiar smell, but it don’t quit. It returns.

“ _Are you scared, little Johnny Marston_?” it asks, even closer now. It’s soft, teasing. _“You scared of a little horseflesh? Don’t wanna go showing yourself up now in front of Uncle Dutch, do ya? That’s a boy.”_

His hands crease around the saddle horn and cantle, and he pushes his head against the leather a little more. He’s shaking. Why in the hell is he shaking?

He can’t do it.

He lets go, breaking clear like Madam’s bit him. “The hell with it!” he shouts, unsettling both horses. “ _Goddamn_ you!” Madam shies away from him, her head snapping up as straight as a poker.

“Pa?” Jack questions. “You alright?”

No, John thinks as he runs a hand through his hair, he’s not alright. He was sure this was over, this feeling of loss that’s crushing his ribs like a dead weight. He tried, he tried so hard… and now it’s back, and it’s because of this goddamn horse, and why the _hell_ had he bought her in the first place…

“I’m fine,” he snaps, grabbing hold of Madam’s reins. She jerks her head away, eyes rolling. “Get your gun ready, I won’t be long.”

Jack frowns. “Okay. Should we wait for-?”

“We’re going,” John says, dead and final. He has to go, no matter how much he shakes like a leaf in a gale. He can’t embarrass himself, not in front of the boy. “Just… gimme a minute.”

He takes Rachel. The thoroughbred seems concerned as he throws on her saddle and leaps onto her back, but he tells himself it’s nothing. He doesn’t spare a glance for the black mare, leaving her in the paddock with the youngstock as he rides out with Jack. He swears, though, that she’s still watching him.

The hunt goes well. Jack takes a few shots and manages to bring down a good-sized doe and a couple rabbits. John teaches him how to skin them, and he tries not to laugh at the sickly shade of green his son turns. They’re heading back, their kills tied to their horses’ backs, when the weather starts to turn. The clouds were swelling throughout the day, but as father and son reach the fringes of the forest their banks finally burst. Rain falls from the sky like bullets, sharp and heavy, and they’re forced to shelter under the boughs of the trees. Jack peers out at the plains beyond and frowns. “It looks like it’s really coming down, Pa.”

“It’ll be okay,” John reassures him, dismounting and tethering Rachel to one of the stronger looking trunks. “We just gotta wait it out.”

As though the weather hears him, thunder roils across the sky like a giant’s footsteps. The horses whinny nervously. “We might be waiting a while,” John adds.

The weather gets worse. Thunder stampedes, rain lashes, and the occasional tongues of lightning flick out across the bruised sky like snake’s tongues. Jack ends up huddled under the trees with the horses, his nose in a book he somehow managed to smuggle into his pack. John keeps watch, waiting for a break in the storm so they can get themselves home. He can see it from here, a small speck in the distance taunting him for being so hasty. He thinks of the fire, the comfort of a roof over his head and Abigail waiting for them to come home. She’ll be worried, he knows, but he has no choice. He waits. 

There’s a rustling of bushes to the right of them, and he immediately raises his gun. The branches part to reveal a stag, fully grown and sporting an impressive pair of antlers. It’s not afraid of him, this man with a gun, or the scent of blood from their kills. It’s unremarkable except for its apparent bravery, but John lowers his gun. There isn’t a need for more game; he takes what he needs from the land, he respects it the way he was taught to by Dutch and Hosea, but that’s not the only reason he stays his hand.

It’s the way the stag is staring at him.

It’s not the empty and hollow stare of a prey animal locked in fear. It’s something more, something deeper. It stops a few feet away from him, its head held high and its tail twitching. There’s a moment that passes between them, only a moment, before it bows its head and walks on, out into the storm.

It moves like a reflection, slow and languid and unlike any animal John ever saw. When it starts to run it remains in the air far longer than it should. Lightning illuminates the sky, and when John can see again the stag is gone. Vanished, into the thunder.

John shakes himself. The stag was damned fast, or the rain was hiding it from view… deer don’t just disappear like that. Jack gets to his feet, and John can tell he saw it too. He’s not sure if that makes him feel better or worse. Neither of them speaks, which he’s grateful for. Jack just stays close, staring out into the downpour until the storm weakens a few hours later.

They ride back hard, the kills beginning to stiffen on the horses’ backs. When they return to the ranch, soaking wet and a little rattled, John sees that the storm wasn’t lost on them. The livestock mill around nervously, lowing and bleating in alarm from the memory of the thunder. Feed buckets are laying across the path where the wind picked them up and threw them in a fit of temper, and there’s a fair bit of grain scattered around that’s being greedily devoured by their brood of disgruntled chickens.

John thinks that’s all there is – a loss of grain and a few broken buckets isn’t too much to trouble himself over – but then the dark shape of Abigail appears from behind the barn, flying towards them with her heavy coat wrapped about her and skirts flapping wildly like duck wings. “Thank god you’re home!” she cries, practically pulling Jack from his horse with the weight of her affection.

“Aw, Ma,” Jack whines, but his complaints are smothered by his mother. She looks to John, and he gets that sinking feeling in his stomach. That isn’t one of her good looks, and he knows most of them.

“John, the horses,” is all she says, and he’s spurring Rachel towards the horse pen with panic beginning to bloom in his chest.

He stops dead when he sees the destruction. There’s a sizable hole in the fence, splinters of wood strewn about the ground. Some graciously hang by a thread, but it’s a mess. The pen is also empty, save for a hassled Uncle and his long-suffering mare. “What happened, old man?” John asks hoarsely, slipping from Rachel to inspect the damage.

“The storm sent ‘em crazy,” Uncle grunts as he struggles to sling a saddle over his horse’s broad back. “Ain’t nothing I coulda done, I swear. They just ran straight through the fence. I don’t reckon they got too far, but we gotta get this fixed. The black though, she jumped the damn thing.”

_The black._ John only has one black horse. He didn’t need to know its colour anyway – he knows it was Madam that sent the rest crazy enough to run through a solid fence.

“We gotta get the horses back first,” he decides grimly, mounting back up and uncoiling his lasso. “We’ll put ‘em in the barn ‘til the fencing’s fixed.” He looks to Uncle, who is already hauling himself onto his grouchy mare. “Time to earn your keep.”

Abigail takes Jack’s horse to ride with them, leaving the boy at home, and they all set out to look for the horses. John’s reminded of a time long ago when they’d all ride out like this, a twenty or so strong gang heading out to find another spot to set up camp or flee the law that was chasing them. Now they was doing the chasing, and the horses were doing the running.

John, Uncle and Abigail stay out on the plains for hours. They find Abigail’s saddle mare first, then a couple of colts huddled together just off the beaten path. They herd them together, the mares and the youngsters, and drive them back with whoops and hollers. John’s fear, however, the one he nurses the whole time, is realised when they count up the animals.

Madam is missing.

He goes out again, alone and on a tired horse with the rain beginning to lash at both their hides and leave them shivering, but finds nothing. She’s gone, spirited away by the thunder and hail like she was never there in the first place.

* * *

He goes out every day for a week until he finally gives up.

He’s so angry, in those first days. Angry that she managed to get loose, angry that he’d gone and bought such a wild creature in the goddamned first place when all he needed was sheep… most of all, though, he’s angry at himself for not looking out for her more. She’d been Arthur’s pride and joy, he knew that, and the ache in his chest now she’s gone hurts more than when she was there; in the pen, in the yard, fixing him with a look too knowing for a simple, dumb beast.

John works hard instead, the way he knows. He fixes the fence, then extends the horse pen a little more to give the youngsters space to grow. He toils in the field to plant grain for the animals and vegetables for his family. He even rides to town with Uncle, intent on selling more stock and drinking some of the profit away too. He works so that, heavy with fatigue, he can sleep soundly and not get troubled by dreams.

They come anyway, slipping through the veil like ghosts.

_Gunfire. Flames. The sound of riders. Pushing Old Boy faster, faster, though his arm still pains him and bullets split the air around him._

_Arthur, his face drawn and pale with the Tuberculosis, telling him he’ll go no farther. That he’s done. The fleeing, the start of a run he hasn’t ever really stopped._

John wakes with a jolt, sitting up in the bed he shared with Abigail and he shakes. He don’t cry, _can’t_ cry, but… goddamn, does he shake. It’s God’s way of punishing him, he guesses. When the dreams start to include a horse’s scream, agonised yet defiant, he stops trying to sleep.

It’s weeks of this, of torment, until John finally leaves the warm sheets of his bed and takes a bear fur blanket to the kitchen. He sits at their table, draped in the beast’s old skin, when Abigail appears in the doorway. “John?”

He starts. “I’m sorry, darlin’. I wake you?”

“No,” she says, drifting towards him in nothing but her undergarments. “To tell the truth, I ain’t been sleeping.”

“Ah. Well, I’m sorry to hear that.” He pulls out the chair beside him, a silent question, and she sits. They never did need much talk to know what the other needed. “Penny for your thoughts?”

She fixes him with an examining stare. “You.”

“I asked first.”

“No, I mean _you._ You’re what’s troublin’ me.”

“Oh.” John pauses. “Can I ask why?”

Abigail worries at her lip.

“If it’s the drink, I can quit takin’ Uncle down to Blackwater,” he suggests. They both know it ain’t the drink.

Abigail is strangely silent, and John reckons it’s the first time he’s seen her struggling for words. “John… I’m just gonna come out and say it, okay, because there ain’t no right way to say this, but… I know why you bought that black mare.”

He freezes. He says nothing, but the wind howling through the empty fireplace sounds rather like the sigh Abigail gives as she leans back in her chair. “It’s Madam, ain’t it? That mare. Knew it the moment I saw her, scars an’ all. Uncle may be too dumb and Jack don’t remember much, but I spent enough time dodging her teeth to know that’s her. She must be near twenty now.” Her eyes narrow. “You bought her ‘cus of Ar-”

“I don’t feel like talkin’,” John cuts in, rising to his feet. “A mare’s a mare, she’s gone and she ain’t comin’ back. Ain’t nothing more to discuss.”

“There’s plenty to discuss, ‘specially Arthur!”

He flinches. It’s the first time Arthur’s name has been spoken in his house. Even though Abigail hissed it out, spitting like a snake, it travels around the room as though it was shouted. Now this space knows it, will John hear his name whispered from the very floorboards? He shakes his head. “Abigail…darlin’, I can’t… can’t talk about this.”

Abigail doesn’t quit, though. She takes his hand, her steady fingers gliding over his trembling ones. “You can,” she insists, gentle but determined. “You gotta. I know you buried his things outside, I know you think hiding it away means you can stop hurting but… you’re _still_ hurting, John. I see it in you, every day.” Her gaze drifts to their hands, connected by their interlacing fingers. “You bought Madam because you want to remember. You just don’t know how to miss him.”

“I…” John chokes. “I can be sad. That’s what you gotta be, to miss someone.”

“I know. You been sad all your life. But it ain’t the same thing. You wear that sadness like a coat, John, you do, and you need to let it drop sometime.” She shakes her head. “Grief ain’t something to burden you, to keep bottled. Sooner or later, it’ll spill right over.”

John’s shakes are getting worse. It’s as though his body, so desperate to fall apart, is waging a war on itself. The more he shakes, the more he thinks back: to the day on the ridge, the train robberies, the horse stealing, the escape and it’s Arthur, always Arthur there in his head, in his _soul_ and it hurts again, why does it hurt and why did he go and leave him on his own?

“You’re right. I bought Madam because she was his,” John says, his admission painful on his lips. “I figured I could – we could look after her, treat her right the way he woulda wanted. He loved that goddamned ugly, broken horse, an’ now…” The next part is difficult. It builds in his gut, this poisonous thought that has lingered in him for years. He takes a breath. Grits his teeth. Ignores the pain. “She’s gone. I guess… I guess I failed her. Like I failed him.”

His voice is hoarse in its guilt. And that is the moment John Marston breaks.

It’s not explosive, not at first. It isn’t loud either- John’s never been the loud sort. But he senses something shatter in him, the wall he made so strong suddenly nothing more than a pane of glass.

“John,” he hears Abigail say, “John, you’re not… you ain’t breathing’ right. John?”

He doesn’t answer her, but she’s right. His breath comes in stutters like Gatling gunfire and his shakes threaten to break him into pieces.

He failed him.

He failed Arthur Morgan, the best man he ever knew.

He failed him, like he failed everyone.

This pain, this ache, it’s his punishment.

Abigail is at his side and she’s pulling him toward the door, claiming that he needs fresh air. He goes with her limply, his eyes open though he can’t see. He just remembers.

_“I’ll hold ‘em off.”_

_“No.”_

_“It would mean a lot to me. Please.”_

_“I said, no!”_

_“Go to your family.”_

_“Arthur!”_

_“Get the hell out of here and be a goddamn man!”_

Then it hits afresh. He falls to his knees, out there in the moonlit New Austin night, and he roars like a wounded animal. Abigail falls beside him, clutching him to her chest as he convulses in barely contained sobs, and it grounds him. He holds her tight as eight years rip through him like a hurricane.

Arthur. Javier. Bill. Dutch. Hosea. The gang, his family. And being alone, so alone that he pushed those he loved away further.

Abigail is saying something, but he doesn’t hear it until it’s repeated a few times more. “It ain’t your fault,” she’s saying. “It ain’t your fault,” over and over again like she’s trying to brand him with it.

He finally finds his words through the sting of his tears. “I never… wanted… to be the one…what was…left…” he says, his voice broke and torn from the sobbing. “I shoulda died…up there on that mountain. With him. You and the boy, you coulda made something of yourselves.”

“We did!” Abigail protests, cradling his head in her arms. “You stupid man, look at us. We have made ourselves something. I’m a rancher’s wife, we got us our own land. We ain’t runnin no more.”

“Runnin’ is all I know,” John says bleakly. “Arthur, he told me not to look back, but… I don’t think I can.”

“Well, Arthur Morgan was a fool too.” He stares incredulously at Abigail as they sit in the mud of their ranch. Abigail straightens up as she says, “Not looking back ain’t the way to live. You can’t dwell on what’s past, true, but you gotta see where come from else you won’t know where you’re headed.” John continues to stare as she adds, “If you don’t talk about Arthur and what he did for us, he’s nothing but stories. You’ll forget, then he’ll be gone for good.”

John rocks onto his heels, swiping viciously at his face to remove the tears that still linger. “Since when was you so wise, Mrs Marston?”

Abigail shrugs. “Someone has to be around here.” She smiles, and it’s tinged with sadness. “You know, I don’t reckon I ever seen you cry before.”

“I don’t make a habit of it,” he answers, his smile watery.

“I reckon you’ve needed to for a good long while.” She moves some of his hair from his face, a movement so gentle that John’s stomach lurches. “Arthur saved us all. He gave us a chance, a life that we wouldn’t have. That was his gift, John, and it don’t matter if you don’t want it: it’s yours. He knew what he was doing.”

“But-”

“He was dyin’. I wish he was here, ‘course I do. Can you imagine?” She shakes her head, smiling tearfully at the thought. “He’d be sat somewhere shouting at Uncle, tellin’ you that you was doin’ it all wrong. He coulda made a life here, ‘til it was his time. But you know he’d hate that.” She sobers. “He chose how he died, and he died saving you.” She presses her head against his own, and it quells his shakes. “If you don’t wanna fail him, John Marston, then you stay alive. You be a good father to the boy, and a good husband to me. Reckon you can do that?”

John sighs. “I can try.” He nudges her and murmurs, “I don’t deserve as fine a woman as you.”

Abigail laughs. “Oh, I know. So long as you remember that.”

She kisses him then, deep and searing. John tastes the salt from both their tears mixed together and he drinks it in like a parched man, pulling her close to him.

They stay that way for some time, wrapped in one another. It’s not a happy embrace, but it’s one of comfort; two souls convincing each other that they’re not as alone as they think. When John pulls away, looking up at the winking stars, he says, “Where’s my shovel?”

Abigail smiles. “Maybe tomorrow, once the light comes.”

She gets to her feet and pulls him up with a surprising surge of strength. John catches the gleam in her eye and the sway of her hips and agrees: “Tomorrow.” 

* * *

It’s slow progress. He takes the shovel out back a day later and he brings up the trunk, but he doesn’t look at it right away. Just having it there, back in the house, is enough. It’s not in the middle of the room, but John’s eyes tend to drift to it every now and again.

When he finally opens it a few weeks later (he blames the ranch work and the lack of time for the fear he feels in his veins) he takes out Arthur’s guns first. His satchel next, empty of its contents. Then his hat, battered and worn with age and with more than a few mended bullet holes. Each piece of Arthur’s life, carefully taken out and placed on the kitchen table, in the gun store, on John’s head. Jack sometimes takes to wearing it around the place and John lets him, not sure how to feel.

He leaves the journal inside; it’s too painful, too real and too close to the man’s soul than any of the other things. Arthur wanted him to have it, he said as much up on the ridge – but it still somehow felt forbidden. Like it wasn’t John’s to touch.

The summer months soon grow to winter, and when snow blankets the ground and makes ranching harder than ever, John finds it good to talk about the old times. It starts off quiet, a little tidbit here and there to sate Jack’s curiosity, but soon it becomes fully fledged stories to keep them warm. They come out of his mouth like music plucked from an ageing saloon piano; tales of running with Dutch and Hosea and Arthur, times that were more uncertain but far wilder than where the gang ended up. Jack sits, rapt with attention until Abigail shooes him off to bed and shares her own tales of the girls in the camp. Uncle weaves a good yarn too, but John is pretty sure none of the words coming out of the old man’s mouth are true. Talking about them feels different now, no longer a sharp jab in the back. It feels _healing._

It’s in the depths of winter, when the wind is more ice than air and the livestock are huddled together inside the barn, when John’s awoken by the sound of muffled hooves. He’s used to sleeping light, ready to bolt at the slightest sound of trouble; it’s a habit he has a hard time breaking. The sound doesn’t come again but John’s nerves get the better of him and he peels back the covers, fishing out his boots and a coat and trudging out towards his front door. He slips a gun into his waistband, just in case. 

The chill of the November night reaches his bones almost immediately, and he wraps his arms around himself as he steps out onto the porch. Snow has been falling for the past few days, and now he can barely see the top of the cattle’s water trough. He stares out into the night, his breath escaping in clouds. He hears nothing, and sees even less. He’s about to turn back into the house when he sees a shape melt out of the snow. It’s coming from the edge of his property, moving slowly with its head down against the wind. It’s an animal, of that he’s certain, but he’s relieved to find there isn’t a man on its back. As it melts into view he notices the loping gait, the white flash on an overlarge head.

He doesn’t dare believe it.

It’s Madam.

The months have turned her from a tame animal to a feral one, and there’s a lean look to her that all Mustangs get during a particularly harsh winter. Her winter coat is a thick twilight and her mane has grown long and matted in places, but that’s not what John pays attention to. What he sees, as she gets near, is the slightest swell of her belly. It’s barely noticeable, but John’s seen plenty of brooding mares to know what one looks like. “You came back,” he murmurs. 

Madam stops a few feet away from him, pitching her ears back and regarding him with that same stare of distrust he’s known from the market. She paws the ground as John steps off the porch and comes to her, but though she raises her head and drives a hoof into the ground she lets him approach. John’s gentled wild horses before – he moves slow, calm though his heart is pounding in his chest. He reaches out and his hand touches her nose, creasing as she doesn’t bolt or bite. He gets closer, moving his hand down and tangling it in her mane. He feels her tense for a moment, her whole form ready to resist him, but she gives in with a snort and peers down at him, one ear flicking forward curiously. John uses his free hand to rub circles into her shoulder and chest. His fingers skim over the bumps and disturbed skin, mapping out the tough life she’s lived.

She shivers, though he’s not sure if it’s through fear or the cold. Still, she’s warm to the touch, a flesh and blood creature that’s so completely different to the satchel and the hat and the guns waiting for him inside. But she’s still so unequivocally part of Arthur that John finds it hard to look at her. He wraps the mane around his hand a little more and uses it as a lead, convincing her to take her first steps towards the barn and the hay waiting for her there. “C’mon, old girl,” he says as he pushes the barn door open, “time for me to repay the favour.”

* * *

He’s not sure what made Madam return to him. Arthur always said she had a good sense of direction and understood what ‘home’ was. John’s beginning to understand that too. When his suspicions are confirmed by the horse doctor in town, he’s worried. Old mares don’t carry to term that often, and when they do they do it badly. But Madam’s strong, and he has a belief in her even if Uncle rolls his eyes and mutters that they’ll be burying her come spring. Abigail makes her a special mash she remembers Kieran making once, and to John’s surprise Madam eats ravenously. “She must be hungry, to eat your cooking,” he says, and narrowly avoids a smack.

Jack is fascinated by her; John often finds him peering over her stable door, watching the way she fills out with good food and the life inside her. But John is the one Madam calls for, who causes her to get to her feet and whinny for attention. John takes to sitting with her in the evening, after he’s spent time with his family and they’re getting ready for bed. The noise of rustling hay and snorting horses grounds him, and he takes care in looking over her scars and bumps. Each one, he knows, tells a story, and some are tales only Madam can tell. John sees the ghosts of bank robberies and bounty hunter chasing etched across her like a map, but he also sees the peace in her now. She doesn’t flinch so much when someone gets close, and her ears no longer fly back at the sight of him. Perhaps it’s his imagination, but he swears she’s healing from whatever hurt her, too.

It’s this thought that causes him to bring Arthur’s journal out with him one of those nights. Madam is down, cushioned by straw they can scarce afford but Abigail insists she must be kept comfortable, and she doesn’t stir at his appearance. She knows now there’s nothing to fear from him. John settles himself in the far corner and notes how her legs are tucked as neatly underneath her as a cat’s.

He opens the journal with trembling hands, but once he starts he can’t bring himself to stop. Arthur’s life rushes out through the pages. Blackwater. His worries for Dutch. Mary. The heists, the chases, the things he sees on his travels – it’s all there. John reads Arthur’s words as though the man were there beside him, and even picks out a few sketches that look remarkably like Madam. A younger Madam, a fitter Madam with a fiery look in her eye that’s not quite been quelled and a proud arch to her neck. Tears prick at the corner of his eyes, and this time he lets them flow freely. They trickle down his face and fall into the straw surrounding him, but this isn’t a weak feeling. Instead, John feels stronger than ever.

There are blank pages at the end of the journal, yellowed with age but nonetheless vacant and waiting to be filled. John hesitates, wondering whether Arthur would kill him for this, but fishes a pencil out of his pocket. It’s one he was using earlier to mark the fence posts, but it’ll mark paper just as well. He glances over at Madam, nestled into her straw with her stomach beginning to curve with the swell of her wild foal. He thinks of his family, found or otherwise, settling themselves down for the night. And he thinks of himself, breath in his lungs and his heart still beating.

He brings the pencil down lightly, and begins to draw. He draws the mare in front of him, her flat head and her huge hooves and her grizzled expression. He draws her as he sees her, led down in his barn in a gentle sleep. He’s no artist, not like Arthur, but he tries.

He writes a single sentence under it when he’s done, in a hand that’s uncertain yet earnest.

‘ _She is going to be okay’._

And John Marston knows, as he closes the journal and tucks it back in his coat, that he’ll be the same.


End file.
